DC, the seat of US government

DC is the capital of the US. This means that DC area residents have easy access to a lot of neat things. One of them is sitting in on Supreme Court cases. For those of you who don’t know, members of the public are allowed to sit in on supreme court oral arguments.

I tried to do this yesterday morning to hear the oral arguments in the case of MGM v. Grokster, which deals with whether software or harware manufacturers can be held liable for (potentially) illegal actions on part of their users. This was a pretty big case, and a large crowd turned out in hopes of seeing the arguments. So large that only a small fraction of the waiting crowd got to attend, while the rest of us (myself included) were left standin outside. However, I did take some pictures of the goings-on outside the building, and posted them up on flickr.

If you’re interested, you can read more about the morning here. I’m still hoping to see the supreme court in person, and I’ll be trying again next month. Taking a half-day off work is worth it to see democracy in action.